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This chapter addresses the various ways in which local forces in Oregon and Washington used the news of Portland's 1912 scandal to advance their own political agendas. An assessment of how the 1912 scandal spread to the small eastern Washington town of Walla Walla and there implicated John Gibson, a locally prominent newsman and church worker, is then provided. Dana Sleeth's bitter campaign against the Portland elites had helped crystallize at the local level the notion that the homosexual was a middle- and upper-class character, lacking any roots in the working classes. Edward Stonewall...

This chapter addresses the various ways in which local forces in Oregon and Washington used the news of Portland's 1912 scandal to advance their own political agendas. An assessment of how the 1912 scandal spread to the small eastern Washington town of Walla Walla and there implicated John Gibson, a locally prominent newsman and church worker, is then provided. Dana Sleeth's bitter campaign against the Portland elites had helped crystallize at the local level the notion that the homosexual was a middle- and upper-class character, lacking any roots in the working classes. Edward Stonewall Jackson McAllister was a man who emerged as a central figure in the Portland scandal. The political and legal activities of McAllister are then described. Gibson's immediate repentance and the substantial support he enjoyed from locals shielded him from the kind of public humiliation suffered by McAllister.